1'20 The Lon(st in Oyprus 



watchful eyjB has still to be kept on the trouble there are annual jrrants 

 for the employment of the third, and a large amount of the " cultivation " 

 is kept in the Government laboratories. But, along with other war 

 economies in Cyprus, agriculture has had to suffer, and although it is 

 said that the locust danger is a thing of the past it is a subject of con- 

 troversy as to whether the plague has been combatted or if economy has 

 had a say in this matter. 



In comparison with the Cyprus locust the Syrian migratory species 

 is a far more formidable creature and its ravages, when it appears, are 

 so much more serious that many of the older accounts must have referred 

 to these invasions from over seas. Several of them speak of flocks of a 

 small bird' which suddenly appeared in the island with the insects and 

 ate up so many that the plague was minimised. Van Bruyn recounts 

 how "in the year 16G8 throughout the island, but especially in the 

 country round Famagusta, there was such a vast quantity of locusts 

 that when they were on the wing they were like a dark cloud through 

 which the sun's rays could scarcely pierce." 



Early in 1915 news reached Cyprus that swarms of locusts were 

 ravaging part? of Syria. Then, that numbers had been found along 

 parts of the coast both north and south of Famagusta in the E. of the 

 island, and that one of our cruisers which put in at that port had passed 

 through a cloud of them' on her way and had many settle. The first 

 swarms to arrive were few in number and were not ready for egg laying. 

 A little damage was done in gardens and. as is the Cypriote nature, a 

 great-to-do was made about it : but with the aid of Government grants 

 under the supervision of the Treasury — not the Agricultural Department 

 as one might expect — most of the locusts were caught in the early morn- 

 ing by knocking them oft" the trees where they clung heavy with the 

 night dews. This measure for the adult insect is the most eft'ective. 

 After egg laying had taken place digging over the soil and collecting the 

 masses was usefully practised, and — after hatching — for both native and 

 foreign species, spraying with a paraffin mixture, the invention of the 

 Entomologist to the Agricultural Department. Tie egg masses collected 

 came to such an amount that one of the old Turkish storehouses in 

 Famagusta, formerly a church of Venetian date, was filled with them. 

 The sticky eggs are laid by the female in a hole which she bores in the 

 loose soil and form an agglutinated mass covered with grains of earth. 



In the latter part of the summer fresh swarms of locusts made their 

 appearance while others were ravaging Egypt. This time some appeared 

 on the northern coast while large numbers invaded spots in the southern 



